Level Up (A5E) A5E + alt-5E = ?

[Thomas T Rolling]

I am intrigued by A5E, but have not yet bought in.

I am also interested in some of the 5E alternatives being produced by other companies.

How difficult is it to mix and match elements of A5E with some of the other not-quite-5E games?

 

[xiphumor]

I am intrigued by A5E, but have not yet bought in.

I am also interested in some of the 5E alternatives being produced by other companies.

How difficult is it to mix and match elements of A5E with some of the other not-quite-5E games?

I suppose that would depend on what you specifically want to mix and match, and what other systems you're trying to get it to work with. Can you give us some examples so we can give you better answers?

 

[ART!]

I've run a LU ranger in a WOTC 5E game, and it worked just fine. The LU classes are technically more powerful than standard 5E classes, but most of the extra stuff is non-combat, so it fleshes out the classes rather than making them more awesome at killin' stuff.

I've also used the exploration challenges from LU, and their approach to traps, all to very nice effect. Those are both things you can just drop int to any 5E game. They're not replacing much if anything in WOTC 5E - they're just new, more nuanced approaches to things.

 

[Distracted DM]

Arguably the best stuff from Level Up is the GM-side stuff, most of which can work with any 5e game. The Monstrous Menagerie and Trials and Treasures (their MM & DMG) are golden.

 

[Jacob Vardy]

On the DM end, my base is the a5e books. I rarely use o5e creatures but i do use lots of Kobold Press, MCDM, and Monty Cook Publishing creatures. They all work fine. Even creatures converted from the Cypher system.

 

[Timespike]

On the character side, subclasses/archetypes from other 5e variants will work just fine with no modifications in A5E classes well over 90% of the time. Even the exceptions will need just a little bit of tweaking. I did a whole, extensive breakdown of the player side of things a while back as a blog post. You can find that here: The Player’s Case for Level Up: Advanced 5e — Purple Martin Games

One thing I probably should have included in the blog post and will probably edit in later: you'll want to pick whether you're using O5E [races + background] or A5E [heritage + culture + background] for each character. Because "race" got split into heritage and culture and ASIs got moved to backgrounds in A5E, that's one place that could cause some issues if you're not careful. If you're using destinies, I personally think everybody should get one.

As the others have said, you can just wholesale swap the whole GM side out whenever you feel like it with no ill effects, and you can mix and match monsters in particular to your heart's content. I often will have monsters from multiple companies, variants, and sources in the same encounter with no problems.

 

[Distracted DM]

I'm sure it could be argued, but in my experience a5e characters are more powerful than 5e characters if you exclude broken builds and overpowered design.
Overall character options are better-designed, and the characters have a lot more "cool stuff;" sometimes too much to keep track of for new players, but once you get used to it it's great. The origins (heritage, culture, background, destiny) can give a character a lot of power.. heritage can provide one damage resistance, and culture another.

That isn't to say that a5e character options don't have their own flaws- I'm building a doc of house-rules to deal with things that have proven to be problematic. But feats, spells, magic items, etc. are so much better to deal with as a GM, and obvious pains have been fixed.

That said, at first glance players might dislike changes. For example:
Paladin players will see that they're no longer smite-machines because the a5e version (herald) is designed in the spirit of older paladins, where smite evil is one piece of the toolbox but not the class' entire identity.

On the other hand, they basically just made bards and berserkers(barbarians) better; and they were already good in 5e.

 

[Timespike]

I would think that fighters and druids are also less nasty (or at least less explosive) than their O5E versions.

 

[Distracted DM]

I would think that fighters and druids are also less nasty (or at least less explosive) than their O5E versions.

Oh yes that's a good point, player reactions with those two:

Fighter: "It doesn't have action surge? What's the point of being a fighter then?"
Druid: "Skinchanger (the a5e version of Moon circle) just gives some temp hp, it doesn't get a completely fresh hp pool for its forms? So it's useless."

These reactions may be slightly exaggerated, it's been over a year since I started switching my tables to a5e, but once players were broken of their preconceptions set by 5e they've enjoyed a5e considerably.

When I start my next game in a month or two I'm going to give players the option to play 5e or a5e classes since most of my tables have given a5e a fair shot now; I think most of them won't go back to 5e classes- I already allow most 5e subclasses if there isn't an equivalent a5e version (especially since I house-rule some broken 5e options).

 

[Timespike]

Yeah, that sounds like standard player catastrophizing.

To the fighter: "Dude, have you looked at everything else you get now? You will not lack for ass-kicking. Don't worry about that."
To the druid: "Oh, so you didn't notice the fact that you can talk and cast (some) spells while wildshaped now, I take it?"